As
in most remote areas, life begins with the first birdsong
in my neighbourhood. At six o’clock, the day is clear
and some bicycles as well as a few cars drive up and down
Raj Basanta Roy road. But the first visible economic activity
starts at seven when the newspaper is being delivered. ‘Life
begins with the reading of the news from the previous day
in Bengal,’ says my friend Dipankar, ‘nothing
can be done before that.’ ’ more>>>

Seven
and a half miles from the heart of São Paulo there
is a gated community which houses 30,000 of the city’s
richest and most security conscious residents, many of whom
travel by helicopter to work among the 17 million other inhabitants
of the world’s third largest city. According to the
Washington Post, ‘at night, on “TV Alphaville,” residents
can view their maids going home for the evening, when all
exiting employees are patted down and searched in front of
a live video feed.’ more>>>

London.
Charing Cross Road. I must have walked up and down that
road two or three thousand times. Perhaps ten thousand.
Who knows? How to calculate a figure with any form of accuracy
when it traces back forty years to my early teens? Can’t
I make a stab in the dark, perhaps like Simenon when he
purported to have had sex with ten thousand women since
the age of
thirteen and a half in his “need to communicate”?
A figure later reduced to around one thousand two hundred
by his second wife. more>>>

The
old man with mutton-chop whiskers whose job it was to
meticulously
log the hourly readings
in a stiff-backed
journal
marked "Greenwich Meteorological Bureau" almost had
a heart attack. Rubbing his eyes in disbelief, he stared at
the precision built Negretti & Rossi thermometer as if
it had gone truly mad. Suddenly, in the past hour, the mercury
had risen to a remarkable 139 degrees. Of course the thermometer
had been basking outside in the ferocious sun - but 139? This
was England, after all. Not India.more>>>

They
would not let me march. Black people were being lynched,
tarred, feathered, and maimed throughout the south. Duped
out of jobs and left for economic dead. Insulted and
degraded. While I did visit my ancestral home every summer
vacation
of my life, my parents would not allow me to return to
march with the DownSouth, Greensboro, North Carolina
college students during Freedom Summers or even to participate
in civil rights rallies in the new UpSouth homeland of
Newark, New Jersey. Their restrictions were the bane
of
my adolescent existence. more>>>

Lost,
confused, bewildered, I walk around in a daze, overcome by
the colours, the people, the smells, the heat. Will I ever
find my way out of here, I wonder? I walk on trying to make
markers so I can find my way out, but after a while everything
seems the same. Images begin to repeat, as the stalls begin
to merge. more>>>

Midway
between the Gare du Nord and the Porte Saint Denis, built
by Louis XIV, is a charming square called Place Alban
Satragne. A sign informs the visitor that this tiny patch
of greenery has been carved from the fields of the Saint
Lazare farm which was once part of a huge convent of
the same name - le Couvent Saint Lazare - in the 17th
century. During the day, swings, seesaws and sandbackets
attract kids and their moms for a bit of recreation.
But why don’t you come at night? No kids, no young
ladies, only men - plenty of them. Young men with dark
complexion and dirty clothes. Why don’t you ask
them what they are doing here at dusk? The answer is
that they live here, that this is their home and their
own private Paris.more>>>